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VIRGINIAE Item et FLORIDAE Mercator and Hondius . 1630 [i1]

“While
the Pamlico-Neuse region of North Carolina can boast of the state's
oldest towns, it cannot claim the oldest permanent settlements. The
cradle of North Carolina lies in the Albemarle Sound area where
settlements, about Salmon Creek in present-day Bertie County and along
the many south-flowing rivers which empty into the Sound, were begun
sometime in the latter part of the 1650's.” 1

South Part of Virginia Detail notes Batts House [i2]

South Part of Virginia 1657Nicholas Cumberford [i2]

“By
1655 Nathaniel Batts, the first known permanent settler in the region
had a house along Salmon Creek at the western end of Albemarle Sound
from which he engaged in trade with the Indians. Other settlers soon
followed, and by 1663 more than five hundred people were probably living
between Albemarle Sound and the limits of Virginia.”2

“On
March 24, 1663, Charles II of England granted a charter for a part of
the new world which ultimately included this new settlement on Albemarle
Sound to eight prominent Englishmen who had supported his restoration.
By October of the next year the Lords Proprietors, as these eight men
became known, had incorporated this settlement as the County of
Albemarle in the Province of Carolina.” 3

Early settlers passing through the rivers and swamps from Virginia into Albemarle County [i3]

Philip Ludwell Governor 1689-1691 [i4]

“About the time that Ludwell took
office, settlers began to make their way across Albemarle Sound to
occupy land along the Pamlico River. With improved conditions, settlers
began moving into Carolina at a rapid rate. A great many came from
Manakin Town, a French Huguenot settlement a few miles above the Falls
of the James River near present-day Richmond.” 4

“Their
[Huguenots] enterprise quickly attracted the attention of the Lords
Proprietors who, in 1694, instructed Governor Archdale to erect in that
region as many counties as he thought necessary ‘for ye better
regulating and ye encouragemt of ye people.’ Accordingly the region from
Albemarle Sound to Cape Fear was erected into the county of Archdale
although none of the vast wilderness south of Pamlico River was yet
inhabited by white men. As the settlement on the Pamlico grew in
importance, the colonial authorities thought it advisable to extend to
it still further encouragement. In 1696, therefore, the Palatine’s Court
ordered that the region extending from Albemarle Sound to Neuse River
be erected into the county of Bath and given the privilege of sending
two representatives to the General Assembly. About this time, too, a
pestilence among the Indians decimated the tribes along the Pamlico and
still further opened up that region to settlers who continued to arrive
from Albemarle, from Virginia, and from Europe.”5

John Lawson's 1709 Map [i5]

“By the close of the century, the lands
along the Pamlico River were attracting settlers in ever increasing
numbers. Along the creeks and waterways of the region, houses and small
fields became ever more frequent.

Detail from Lawson's 1709 Map [i5]

“Close on the heels of the Pamlico
settlement came the settlement of the region along the Neuse and Trent
rivers. The first settlement in this area was made at the mouth of the
Neuse on the north shore of that stream. This settlement was soon
followed by a French Huguenot colony planted along the banks of the
Trent. Plantations soon began to spread up both sides of the Neuse and
Trent, and later in 1710, over 400 Swiss and Palatine colonists migrated
into the region, under the leadership of Christoph Von Graffenried,
where they founded the town of New Bern.

“In 1708, the region embraced in
present-day Carteret County began to attract settlers also. This
settlement grew rapidly and many families moved into the area about
North River which soon acquired the name of “the Core Sound”
settlement." 6

The Captivity of von Graffenried and Lawson 1711 [i6]

“The Indian wars [1711-1713] left North
Carolina in a deplorable condition. They had checked immigration, driven
many people out to the province, and taken a heavy toll of human life.
The destruction of property in the Tuscarora War was widespread. Bath
County, the chief scene of conflict, was “totally wasted and ruined.”
Along the Neuse and the Pamlico all livestock had been driven off or
killed, crops had been destroyed, plantation laid waste, and scarcely a
cabin had been spared the torch. Conditions in Albemarle, although that
country had escaped the ravages of actual fighting, were but little
better. Besides supplying its own needs, Albemarle had been compelled
for three years to provide for the necessities of Bath County and to
support the military forces raised in both the Carolinas against the
enemy. Its supply of pork and grain was exhausted, its trade destroyed,
and its people, wrote Governor Pollock, reduced to poverty greater than
one could well imagine.

“’Thanks be to God,’ wrote the
missionary, John Urmstone, in the winter of 1713, ‘we have no
disturbance among ourselves, but all peoples hearts unite and every
Member of the Government is as happy as the times will admit of under
the wise and prudent administration of our good President.’ When Pollock
surrendered the administration to Governor Eden in May, 1714, the
colony was enjoying for the first time in a decade a period of ‘peace
and quietness.’

Fundamental Constitution 1681 [i7]

“One of the most serious obstacles to
the prosperity of the colony had been the absence of grist-mills. Mill
sites were scarce and more than fifty years passed after the settlement
of North Carolina before a mill was erected in the colony. As late as
1710 De Graffenried states that ‘there was in the whole province only
one wretched water mill.’ Poor people pounded their grain in wooden
mortars, while the wealthy used hand mills, or else imported flour and
meal from New England.

“Looking to the improvement of inland
transportation and commerce, the 1715 Assembly adopted a comprehensive
plan for the laying out of roads, the building of bridges, and the
establishment of ferries, and for their maintenance; while for the
encouragement of inter-colonial and foreign commerce it made provision
for keeping pilots at Roanoke and Ocracoke inlets who were required
‘constantly and diligently to make it their business to search &
find out the most convenient channels,’ keep them properly staked out,
and to pilot vessels safely over the bars.

“Recognizing the importance of towns as
centers of trade and commerce, the Assembly for the ‘Encouragement of
the Town of Bath and all other Towns now or hereafter Built within this
Government,’ conferred upon them whenever they should have at least
sixty families the privilege of representation in the General Assembly.
At this time Bath, Edenton, and New Bern were the only towns in
North Carolina.” 7

"Possibly the Tuscarora War of 1711-1713
delayed the establishment of a town within Topsail Inlet. Within seven
months after the power of the Tuscarora Indians had been broken in
March, 1713, a town [Beaufort] was laid out on the southwest corner of
the tract of land which Farnifold Green had obtained in 1707." 8

After several attempts to plant a settlement in the Cape Fear area, including 1660 and 1665, "The oldest grant for land
on the Cape
Fear now extant, is one to Maurice Moore for 1,500 acres on the west
bank of the river,
dated June 3, 1725. From this
grant Maurice Moore, in 1725, laid off, fourteen miles above the mouth
of the river,
a tract of 320 acres as a
site for a
town, and his brother Roger, ‘to make the said town more regular,
added another parcel of land’ ... Moore then made a bid for royal favor by
naming his town Brunswick in honor of the reigning family. But the career
of Brunswick did not commend it to the favor of crowned heads or their
representatives; it never became more than a frontier village, and
in the course
of a few
years, during which, however, it played an important part in the history
of the province,
it yielded with no good grace to a younger and more vigorous rival sixteen
miles farther up the
river, which was named in honor of Spencer Compton, Earl of
Wilmington." 9

In 1740, the village, originally called New Liverpool,New Town and Newton, was renamed Wilmington.

Detail from 1737 "A New and Correct Map of the
Province of North Carolina" - (Captions added) [i8]

Before the first North Carolina towns were formed, early scattered settlers
had either been granted acreage, knowingly or unknowingly squatted on
property owned by others or simply “took up” ungranted land.

"The
incorporations had to be approved by the royal council and that was
only done seven times in the colonial era. I don’t like to use the term
incorporate for that reason—I like to stick with ‘legislative action’
which covers 'authorized to be laid out’ and established.'" 10

1 Herbert R. Paschal Jr., Ph.D., A History of Colonial Bath, The Committee on the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary,
Edwards & Broughton Company, Raleigh, North Carolina 1955. (Paschal
was a professor of history at East Carolina University 1955-1982; his
papers are part of ECU Manuscript Collection.)

2William S. Powell, North Carolina Through Four Centuries, University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

3Charles L. Paul, Colonial Beaufort: The History of a North Carolina Town,
1965. (Paul earned his Assoc. of Arts degree at Chowan College,
Bachelor of Arts degree at Carson-Newman College, Master of Divinity
degree at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and a graduate assistantship as well as Masters
of Arts Degree at East Carolina University. Paul was a professor of History at Chowan
University for 39 years.)

4Powell

5R.D.W. Connor (Secretary North Carolina Historical Commission), History of North Carolina,
Volume I, Lewis Publishing Company, 1919. Conner was the first
archivist of the U.S. 1934-1941 (appointed by Pres. F.D. Roosevelt),
founding father of NC Archives and History, and a Kenan Professor of
History and Government at UNC.

6Paschal

7 Connor

8Paul

9Connor

10 Ansley Herring Wegner, research historian at the North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Images:

i1 Virginiae Item et Floridae,
Hand-colored print from the original 1632 map published in Amsterdam by
cartographers Gerhard Mercator and Jocodus Hondius, Image courtesy
George Howard.

i2The South Part of Virginia, Nicholas
Comberford 1657 chart, notes Batts House. As noted on LearnNC.org: The
east coast of North Carolina is drawn along the bottom edge of the
map. The map extends south as far as Cape Fear and north as far as
what appears to be the Virginia border. The western part of the map (on
the top edge) is marked as Tuscarora Indian territory. Between the
Pamlico Sound and Albemarle Sound (labeled the Roanoake Sound), the map
is labeled “This is a swampy wilderness;” the land north of Albemarle
Sound is labeled the same. The house of Nathaniel Batts appears on the
map on a piece of land between the
Chowan (labeled Choan) River and the “Morallico River.” DETAIL: Shows
house in the center of the image.

i3"Early settlers passing through the rivers and swamps from Virginia into Albemarle County," Colonial North Carolina, Hugh T. Lefler and William S. Powell, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1973.

i5
John Lawson, 1709. To His Excellency William Lord Palatine; The most
Noble Henry Duke of Beaufort; The Right Honoble. Iohn, Lord Carteret;
The Honoble Maurice Ashley, Esq., Sr. John Colleton Baronet; Iohn
Danson, Esq; And the rest of the True and Absolute Lords Proprietors of
Carolina in America. This Map is Humbly Dedicated by Ion. Lawson
Surveyor General of North Carolina. North Carolina Maps, North Carolina State Archives, North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

i6Pen
drawing of captivity of Christoph von Graffenried and Surveyor General
John Lawson by Franz Louis Michel. Michel was a Swiss gentleman who,
with von Graffenried, brought the Swiss and Germans to Carolina and
founded New Bern in 1710. Image found on the Meherrin Nation website. (A
member of the Meherrin Tribe was on the tribal council with the
Tuscarora.)

i7Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, The first
version of this early constitutional document intended for the American
colonies was written and published in 1669-1670 and later amended. The
original authors were most likely Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Earl of
Shaftesbury (1621-1683) and the philosopher John Locke
(1632-1704).

i8
John Cowley, "A New and Correct Map of the Province of North Carolina,"
London. 1737, drawn from the original 1733 map by Edward Moseley, North Carolina Maps, North Carolina State Archives, North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill, NC, USA.